Stumped!

This happens whenever I take a train from Chennai to Bangalore (Ahem..read as whenever I travel alone!). After taking consecutive modes of transportation(share auto, train/bus, natarajar service), one would arrive at the Central station at least an hour before departure. After going through the not-so-thorough security check, one faces a huge hall buzzing with life. A big crowd stands around the neon board announcing departure/arrival information. One places oneself at a myopically convenient distance from the board, throwing a glance around to test luck by looking for an empty chair. Since one has arrived a tad too early, the wait is inevitable. There are two kinds of waiting you have to do at the station (if you are an early bird that is!) - one is the waiting you do at the huge hall until the platform number appears magically on the neon board. The other is the waiting you do at the platform, on a bench(if lucky) until the time of departure, even if the train has already made its presence felt! At any station, the crowd is diverse, in the sense, a visual treat to someone who kills time by indulging in "people watching". A constant voice inside the head (will be referred to as "the V" ) blabbers about anything and everything that meets the eye from the passengers to the railway crew to the vendors to the staunch of the dried fish in wooden crates! The V spares none. V makes trivial comments about folks who litter to the folks who jitter nonstop! After a while of  switching alternate foot and balancing the luggage, the platform number flashes on the board and a wave of human forms rush in different directions approaching their respective trains/platforms. The V becomes excited too, just like the others and keeps chanting the one number like a mantra until the destination arrives( *5..5...5.. for platform 5*) !

At Platform 5

The train arrives after a good fifteen minutes by which time the V has already convinced one to purchase a "plastic water bottle" for the night, silently making the one feel guilty about not getting her own bottle of water and thus adding to the waste generation!!  After a reluctant purchase of a "Rail Neer", one is faced with the vision of an approaching train.Then starts the confusion

The V is baffled! Which way reads right? Which way should one take? So from Chennai to Bangalore, 12657, the arrow points towards the left. So are the coaches going to be 1-end from right to left ??  One looks around to find a majority of travellers ridiculously forming similar lines of confusion on their foreheads! After a quick observation, with a declaration from the V that there must be a mistake, one does what every other person was doing... Wait for the chart to identify the correct coach! Then like Superman, a guy goes around sticking charts declaring the names, ages, sexes of the so and so's about to undergo a journey! Thankfully the chart always has the coach number stuck on top! Noticing this, a wave of human forms make sudden movements trying to overtake each other to reach their respective coaches. One crosses the coach S7 and the V curses whoever was lucky enough to get S7 ( Only S7 reads the same both ways !) After some huffing and puffing, one reaches the correct coach and the V is enthused to find one's name and quickly checks out "the others" (mostly in their prime 60's every other time :D). The V makes a remark and boards the train in relief!

Rewind button!

This happened a while ago. I was travelling alone from Chennai to Nagercoil by train. My Dad had booked in ladies quota. I was expecting only ladies to be around, which was a little comforting in a way. I boarded the train, huffing and puffing with just 5 minutes to spare. I began chaining my luggage and securing it with a lock, finding a place for my water bottle, all this while in short of breath. Only after completing the above mentioned ritual did I relax and for the first time after boarding the train, I took a deep breath, throwing around a glance at my co-passengers.

Everybody around had one book or the other in hand about "God" and I didn't want to disturb anyone. Sitting right in front of me was this elegantly dressed lady(will be referred to as aunty from now on) deeply engrossed in her book about God. She seemed to be in her late 50's. While I was busy taking a mental note of everything about aunty, she suddenly looked up, caught my eye and threw me a smile. I smiled back and asked her the only thing I could think of at that moment "When will we reach Nagercoil? "

She answered "8 o'clock" and asked me where I wanted to go.  Even before I could answer, the other lady in the window seat (corner lady) jumped into the conversation. It was kind of like a relief to her that somebody was talking and she was only too glad to jump in. Next to me was an old lady who was reading some notes she had taken in some class. I tried to take a sneak peek but couldn't fathom much. She was the oldest of the ladies there. I immediately offered her my lower berth for two reasons:

1) I always offer my lower berth to anyone so that my mom would get lower berth whenever she travels, thus adhering to what my Dad keeps quoting "one good turn deserves another".
2) I needed to get up late and was desperate for an upper berth so that I wouldn't be disturbed!(the ugly truth!)

The old lady had a middle which I accepted (silently cursing my luck). I have always resented the middle berth. I don't know why they went to such great lengths to make it so crammy. My thoughts were interrupted suddenly by the corner lady who gave everyone a picture (I will look for it and post it when I find it)

It was a picture of God with a quote. It was beautiful and I thought it was a definite sign (of what ? I still don't remember)

It was then time for dinner. One person opened her box and soon everyone opened theirs. It reminded me of the guy who waves the flag to commence a race. I had bought lemon rice from the irctc canteen (part of the reason for my last minute entry). Once the eating started, the sharing automatically happened. I was surprised more by the corner lady's kindness than anyone else. She gave me a poori to compensate for the lemon rice I was hogging( yes! I can do that!). I found her to be nice. Amidst conversation, my mind automatically went to what I would do after dinner. The mind forms my next question based on this simple logic:

Food - sleep - where? - middle - upper? - exchange? - try luck? 

The question - Who has taken the upper berths?? 

Immediately Aunty said she got one and exchanged it with corner lady. The other upper berth was alloted to an obscure character travelling with us. She was about my age. I guess I missed her description because she was on the window seat on my side, beyond the scope of my observation. Since she was young, I din't see any point in asking for the upper berth. And she didn't join in on any conversation and seemed engrossed in her phone( which I noted when the food sharing was happening).  So I decided to probe the corner lady. Slowly, I timed my question properly and asked "Is it okay for you? You're in saree? I can go up if you want".  Then the corner lady once again surprised me by quoting my thoughts saying "No problem! I want to sleep well and not be disturbed". What could I say to that?? Post dinner, she proved me wrong when she managed to climb up so gracefully, though clad in a saree, something I have always thought to be impossible to achieve!  This changed what little I knew about sarees and took up my respect for the corner lady by a notch.

Accepting defeat, I crashed early. I got up a couple of times in between and one last time around 7 to find only aunty in the bay. All the others had got down in some station. We had 1 hour to kill.

As soon as  I climbed down or rather jumped down straight, aunty said " I thought I'll wake you up by 7. You got up early!" That was when I knew that my watch was 10 minutes fast! Darn! I hate overtaking my alarm clock/time ! But I didn't dwell on it too much. I just smiled and marched off to the basin to brush my teeth.

By the time I got back, I had lost all apprehension about trying to manage the 1 hour left. Slowly aunty and me engaged in small talk. She told me about herself. I allowed her to talk punctuating my presence with "oho" s and "oh apidiya"s. Somehow it seemed like she wanted - her to talk and me to listen and not the other way around. So I listened. She said that she had  lost her husband a year ago to heart attack and after that her world revolved around her kids. I probably would have heard the exact sentence in movies/sitcoms or read it somewhere a zillion times. But sitting in front of aunty and hearing those words.. felt real..yea that's the truth. Somehow it felt like I was getting a glimpse into the life of another person. Was I destined to know this? How is me knowing this helping? I don't know. But what I do know is that it could've been just anybody. She had to tell it to someone and I was chosen. That was all that mattered. Soon we reached the destination. We got down. I helped her with herluggage. We didn't exchange names or numbers. I shook hands with her saying "nice meeting you aunty" and she simply said " if God's willing, we' ll meet again".

Here I am blogging this incident which happened a long time back. I still remember her face. I do hope we will meet and recognize eachother someday for that one good conversation we shared on the train to Nagercoil.